Government asylum proposals ‘barbaric’

Social care professionals have attacked government plans to place
the children of failed asylum seekers into care as
“barbaric”.

John Fitzgerald, former chief executive of the Bridge Child Care
Development Service, said the government’s proposal announced in
the Queen’s Speech showed it was guilty of “severe racism and
severe child abuse” in order to achieve a policy aim.

He told the conference: “We ought to be saying very loudly that
this is grotesque and it has to stop.

“It is the most barbaric thing I have heard in a long time. It is
an utter disgrace.”

Adele Jones, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies in
Trinidad and Tobago, said if social care practitioners did not
oppose the government’s plans they would, in effect, be “colluding”
in its implementation.

Jones said even though the government had signed up to the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child it had included a clause
whereby “immigration law takes precedence over a child’s rights and
allows the UK government to develop policies like this with
impunity”.

Jones has studied the effects on children of separation from their
parents. She said many children had subsequently suffered mental
health problems including depression.

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